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December 23, 2016

Way of the Warped Fist

Monastic TraditionComments from the Finger: The Lovecraft Handbook comes out at the end of the month on Patreon! You don't want to miss this one! It's the longest book we've written so far (and maybe the best one too)!

Way of the Warped Fist

Monasteries are places of knowledge and wisdom, but not all things are meant to be known. Monks who follow the Warped Fist are truly enlightened -- they understand their place in the vast and maddening universe, and have seen glimpses of the horrible expanses that lurk behind our normal perceptions. This wisdom is not benign; it has changed them, inside and out.
Monks of the warped fist meditate daily, and experience terrifying visions of the cosmos. Slowly, their fighting style changes to match this perspective, and their bodies align with their twisting minds.Visions of Infinity
Starting when you choose this tradition at 3rd level, you can twist a creature's ki and share with it the visions you experience. Once per turn, when you hit a creature with one of the attacks granted by your Flurry of Blows, it becomes absorbed in vision, and has disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before the end of its next turn. Creatures that can’t be charmed are immune to this effect.

Twisted Limbs
By 6th level, your limbs appear to contain multitudinous joints, and can lengthen and contort to a sickening extent. Your walking speed increases by 5 feet, your unarmed strikes have Reach, and, if you are grappled, you can use a reaction or a bonus action to end that grapple, and move to an empty adjacent space.

Distorted Thoughts
At 11th level, your thoughts can’t be read by telepathy or other means unless you allow it. You are immune to being charmed, and when another creature attempts to charm you, you can use your reaction to poison its thoughts, dealing psychic damage equal to half your monk level, rounded down.
Also, as an action, you can spend between 1 and 6 ki points to produce a psionic blast. Each creature within 15 feet of you must make an Intelligence saving throw against your ki save DC or take psychic damage equal to 1d8 damage for each ki point expended + your Wisdom modifier.

Warped Strike
By 17th level, you can fight in unheard-of ways, which are difficult to avoid. Once per turn, if you miss with an unarmed strike, you can immediately make an additional attack.

Twisted limbs is a run on sentence. It should probably be reworded. Perhaps "Your walking speed increases by 5 feet, and your unarmed strikes have Reach. Additionally, if you are grappled, you can use a reaction or a bonus action to end that grapple and move to an unoccupied space within 5 feet."?

Other than that I find no fault with the mechanics or fluff. Keep up the good work!

I didn't write this, but I'm going to defend it nonetheless. It isn't a run-on sentence, as all the independent clauses are separated by punctuation or conjugations. In fact, I'd argue that it is a list, using commas as the list separator. The meaning seems clear to me.

I *would*, on the other hand, like to see both Oxford commas removed, because they get in the way of the list separators and conditional clause.

Right on, i forgot. What about something like,"At the 17th level your limbs can stretch to incredible lengths. As an action you can spend 4 ki points to make a single melee attack at a 15 foot range, on a hit the target takes 5 d8 bludgeoning dmg and has disadvantage on its next attack roll."